I Do Not Like Mondays

Man, I do not like Mondays. So to refocus, here’s something I do like — both from waaay back in the day, and also much more recently.

This is a Beatles song that never was, and maybe ought to have been. Given that I focused last week on a particular Beatle and some music I know from my very early and teenage years, this one’s significant in that it’s a favorite of mine now.

Before I go any further, this is a song I like loud. Not loud, actually; too loud. Sometimes I’ll crank it up on a drive, usually by myself so as not to subject others to the eardrum beating I’ll unleash (though that has happened on several occasions). Listen to it at least with decent earbuds or headphones, or better yet, a Bluetooth speaker with good bottom end, or better yet, a real sound system.

I have to explain some things about this one. While most of my Beatles exposure was initiated through my mother and on my own, this is a tale of fathers and sons, of the little guys — and of chance.

Back in 2015, if I’m not mistaken, my wife and I were visiting my dad and his wife around Christmas. Sometimes they’ll have some music on in the background, and that was the case this time.

A song came on that I knew, yet didn’t. It was Sir George Harrison’s “Within You Without You,” but right away, I thought, “Someone’s done something really cool with this.”

So I had to find out what it was. Turns out Dad had the sweet old CD carousel loaded up and set on random play, and the album that was playing was The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil.

It’s a show in Las Vegas that launched in 2006. As the story goes, toward the end of his life, Harrison happened to meet Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, through their mutual love of auto racing. An idea sprang up to put together a show featuring Cirque du Soleil dance and feats of strength/ muscle control, I guess you could call what they do, set to a backdrop of Beatles music.

They turned to longtime Beatles producer Sir George Martin to produce a “soundscape” of Beatles music around an hour and a half long, and Martin pulled in his son Giles Martin to help create it. They had access to the original Beatles recordings and tracks, which Giles expected would have deteriorated to lots of “hiss and crackle” “after more than three decades had passed.

But the music “was so well recorded by the EMI engineers,” the younger Martin wrote, that “the tapes sounded like they’d been recorded yesterday.” Note that then-EMI Recording Studios was renamed in the 1970s as Abbey Road Studios after the 1969 Beatles album.

The Martins proceeded respectfully, given the material they were using, and Giles decided to try combining some tracks. “Feeling like I was painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, I started work mixing the bass and drums of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ with George [Harrison]’s track ‘Within You Without You,’” he wrote.

Noted his father: “It was Giles who suggested we utilize that marvelous and hypnotic drum beat from Ringo [Starr] to combine ‘Within You Without You’ with ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ It worked brilliantly.”

Now, here’s the thing. In 2015, I had known “Within You Without You” for a good quarter of a century or so, since it’s included on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, which I knew from very young. It is the only song by Harrison on that album, which is one of the Beatles’ most known and influential.

That’s important. Harrison recorded “Within You Without You” on his own, without the rest of the band — instead including an Indian musical accompaniment.

Reflecting back years later, Harrison said it was difficult for him writing songs for the Beatles, like he felt overshadowed by the John Lennon-Paul McCartney songwriting machine. “For me, I had to come from nowhere and start writing and to have something at least quality enough to be able to, you know, put it in the record with all their wondrous hits,” he said.

I wonder if he just went and recorded “Within You Without You” on his own to sort of show what he could do, rather than having to present it to the group.

But the song is noteworthy, leaning toward an enlightened perspective, let’s say, following on the heels of a trip to India for Harrison. Its messaging is pretty solid: Love can save the world. Too much materialism and shallow triviality can extinguish your soul. You should change for the better if need be, and only you can make that happen. And oh, also, try not to be so self-centered; you’re a part of life, yes, but a tiny speck, and the grand scheme of life won’t miss a beat when you’re gone.

For me, although I like it, “Within You Without You” lacks musical punch.

So Giles Martin rolled in some of “Tomorrow Never Knows” from the album Revolver. I had the benefit of never knowing (pun intended) that song, since I didn’t have that album, even though I’ve long known a number of its tracks: “Rigby,” “Taxman,” “Submarine,” “Sunshine.”

I have since acquired that album, just because. I checked out “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and it’s not bad. It’s a song from John essentially capturing a psychedelic experience.

To me, in all fairness, the most standout element of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is Ringo’s drum riff, which I think is great. I usually like his work, but this is something special. Like Harrison, Ringo is something of a “background Beatle,” showing up with lead vocals on only a handful of memorable tracks and with a rhythmic contribution that’s sometimes overlooked.

Stiffening up “Within You Without You” with the drums from “Tomorrow Never Knows” thereby showcases the talents of the underdog Beatles. I like that.

There’s something else very subtle. In “Tomorrow Never Knows,” John’s opening line is, “Turn off your mind relaxing; float downstream — it is not dying,” repeating those last words, and Giles Martin used it to lead into the combined song. But the line is modified to “Turn off your mind relaxing downstream,” omitting “float.”

It works as a more upbeat introduction, coaxing the listener to stop thinking for a moment and relax. The song closes with an interesting fragmented build into “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” a more successful song from Lennon that many take as psychedelic-themed, though it was actually inspired by a drawing by his young son Julian.

As it is, The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil is great work, preserving the essence of a bunch of Beatles songs while offering new takes in some cases. It’s meant to play through continuously, with ups and downs, fast moments and slow, setting the pace of what I’m sure is a great Vegas show. I’d love to see it sometime if I get the chance.

Appropriately, since it came from a chance meeting with Harrison, a few standout tracks are from that Beatle, including an unusual combination of the Indian music that opens “Within You Without You” leading into “Here Comes the Sun” and fading out with more Indian music from “The Inner Light” — and somehow makes it work.

Bravo to the Martins. I don’t always like remixes, covers and the like, often preferring the originals. But in this case, the “Within You Without You”/ “Tomorrow Never Knows” fusion takes parts of two Beatles songs and gives them what they needed: more backbone and more worthwhile meaning.

As I mentioned, I was exposed to this one in 2015, I think it was, through my dad, since it was he who acquired the album. Curious, I recently asked him how he’d come by it, thinking it might have been the Vegas show.

His answer, word for word: “Happen chance. Saw it at Sam’s and picked it up.”

So it was by chance that George Harrison and Guy Laliberte met; chance that my dad, years later, spotted the resulting 2006 album sitting in a display at Sam’s Club, the members-only version of Walmart; chance that the album got picked for a trip in the CD carousel one day and it random-played this particular track while I happened to be listening.

And this song that I like now, I chalk up to my dad — and to another dad’s inclusion of his son on a Beatles project. The timing of Christmas 2015 is also significant, since Sir George Martin died three months later.

As a footnote, sometimes I’ll play some of LOVE when my daughter’s in the car, only not as loud as I prefer parts of it. She’s quite the critic and tells you right away if she doesn’t like music, and so far her response when we pull in the garage and I shut it off has been two words: “More, daddy?”

Content © Aaron G. Marsh